Sculpture Mark Tilley Fires His Kiln

A fellow member of the Solihull Artist Forum is Mark Tilley he is a sculpture and this week he has been firing his kiln on the back lawn of his home in Knowle. On Tuesday morning he began the process to flash up at 9.00am and reached a maximum temperature of 1250deg Celsius about 5pm. The kiln is then allowed to cool.  While on a workshop Mark discovered how to build and then run his own kiln and he has been using it since 2003, obviously there is so much more control and satisfaction, using this kiln than the mass produced electric oven models that merely involving flicking a switch.

Mark has to nurture the process during the day constantly checking the temperature as the heat increases up through a constant line on the graph. Mark was behind his original planned timescale (finish by 2:30pm) because there had to be more consideration for early morning damp in the kiln and therefore he kept the heat lower than normal for about 90 minutes.

At some time during the day the gas bottles have to be changed I stood well back and was considering videoing this aspect but Mark was too quick for me and had begun before I got a good vantage point. It took two minutes from start to finish and for some reason the temperature in the kiln dropped less than normal, a sunny day does make the work very pleasant in the garden but it’s not going to affect the extreme temperatures inside the kiln.

When the kiln was able to be left un assisted Mark showed me his garden workshop/studio.

This is used for storage which he says is fine until he wants to find something – I think everyone has that dilemma with storage

Thursday morning the kiln was opened

A small group of artists had gathered to see what surprises the firing had provided.

Click the image to view larger

Everything seemed to work as it should and the only problem was trying to assemble the tiles into the right position on the picture board, like a large jigsaw, no problem there was enough people to figure out the puzzle.

Two tiles had stuck together but Mark assures us that with care they can be separated.

This piece will go into an exhibition at the Solihull Arts Complex later in the year.

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RBSA| Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

I went to the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists gallery on Sunday evening. For a private view of the exhibition “Candidates”, this show is for artists hoping to be elected as Associates or Associates hoping to be elected as Members of the Society.

3 artists from the Solihull Artists Forum are exhibiting in the show Usha Khosla, Frances Townley and Jan Gay, I took the opportunity to take some photographs for the SAF website www.solihullartists.co.uk

Frances Townley 

Click for Frances pages on the Solihull Artist Forum website

Jan Gay

Click for Jans pages on the Solihull Artist Forum website

I had problems photographing Jans work because the work was up high I’m not tall enough to take the shot at the direct angle, the photos I took seemed at a funny angle

I spoke to Usha early in the evening but I lost contact with her so there’s no photograph of here with her work and as her work was displayed in glass cabinets I decided to wait for another time when I can do it justice. Have a look at her website for now.

As you can imagine the standard was very high, I was introduced to Margaret Fairhead who produces these beautiful textiles she is applying for Membership.

I was impressed with the diverse styles of painting and in particular this painting by John Shakespeare

Title: Handing in,
Media: Oil,
Price: £850,
Artist: John Shakespeare
Have a look at Johns work at www.jshakart.co.uk

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I Shall Not Be Exhibiting At Birmingham Artfest 2009

In September I blogged about the Birmingham ArtsFest Weekend and about the great experience I had exhibiting there. ArtFest takes over the city centre with music events and visual arts exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations.

I particularly like the way the event takes over the council buildings, on the Friday afternoon the buildings are used for conducting council business and as the meetings are finishing the artists take over installing their work on the walls, During the weekend the buildings take on a new atmosphere inviting citizens in to chambers and hallowed rooms that very few would normally see and then its all over by 5pm on Sunday afternoon. Large crowds of people descend on the city and generally there’s that late summer sunshine outside to set the scene off just right. Additionally its great to network with other artists and compare notes.

So why am I not going this September? Last night I began my application to apply for a space and I found that this year there is a payable fee for the stand of either £130 or £200 depending on the size of the space, in the past there has been a payable commission on sales, although I don’t think any of the artist achieved great sales. The council has decided that if they can get the commission fee up front this will guarantee the income.

At last years event the famous credit crunch was just beginning to impact and there was very few sales taken. On the RBSA stand they were selling off small items for boot sale prices, but generally in the Art Space area there were no sales on the day. Lots of interest from people looking at the work but no one seemed to have the odd £300 to spend on artwork in their pockets.

Artfest to me should be a platform for all forms of art. Alongside the small affordable craft pieces there should for example be extra large canvases that would never sell in this environment. A commercial success should not be the criteria and all forms of art should be available to the visitors. Birmingham City Council should be doing everything possible to promote the small businesses that make up the arts sector in the city and not imposing an unrealistic charge for this event

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New Origin For My Unusual Contemporary Photographs

Finding the burnt out cars to use as a basis for my rather unusual contemporary photographs is like feast or famine, regular readers of “You Will Never Look At Them In The Same Way Again” will know that there were two cars found just two days apart in February but nothing since then.

While walking the dogs today I noticed the first tell tale signs of a burnt car, namely tyre tracks leading off the main walk area and into the woods, as I eagerly followed them my hopes were dashed as I found pieces of a burnt car on the floor and at that point I knew that the car had been towed away.

I carried on more in a disbelieving hope that I was wrong only to find the scorched ground.

I looked around for something to retrieve from the incident, a panel or even a smaller piece of metal. There was nothing obvious. There was some molten glass that had solidified into an interesting shape but it was completely grey and didn’t photograph very well.

Then I found this aerosol canister which had many interesting marks on it, so I took it home.

and heres the first two pictures that I have worked on. I’m going to treat the canister in my garden studio and see what results and photographs develop.

I found out that the car was a Peugeot Estate, which made me curse even more because I have found Peugeots have a great combination of metal and body paint that produces great textures and markings, (Scream 1) and estate cars have those nice long roofs that buckle with the intense heat (Sream 2)

I did say that its feast or famine so I’m hoping because the gates have been stripped from the entrance and access for the arsonists will be easier there might be at least one new burnt car in the woods over the next week.

No Action From Bloggers

You will notice I haven’t posted so regular for a while, I have my doctors note, actually a mixture of work and workman digging a hole almost were my pc is. But I noticed that the blogging community is very quiet in general: Pete Ashton, blogged today first time for ages. Stef Lewandowski hasn’t posted for over a month. So I’m in good company.

Retirement with No Problem has also been quiet although this is because the boat is having a refit and they are not on the narrow boat at the moment so nothing to blog about. However, they have had technical problems too. When I tried to access the blog I found a red screen saying that the site was blocked by Google yet when I access through Googles own Google Reader I’m able to access the site as normal. Google claims the site has been attacked by a third party infecting the site with “malicious mailware”. The blog has now been transferred to Blogger. This sent shivers down my spine and I’m now involved in backing every page of “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again”.

One blog that is updated every day is Pete's 'Today In History' Quiz, Pete appears on the BBC 2 quiz show “A Question of Genius” Monday 6^th 4:30 pm

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Saatchi’s Best of British. Phew made it

First of all a bit of background from the website: Saatchi's Best Of British is a nationwide initiative by the BBC and Charles Saatchi to discover the next generation of artistic talent. From artist submissions six chosen artists will be enrolled into Art School in London where they will develop their work under the tutelage of some of the most influential names in the art world today. There will be two principle tutors whose roles are to grow the talents of the students and guide them with their proposed projects towards the final selection. To further inspire and develop them, important figures in the art world will make guest appearances and deliver master classes.

So can you image this is like winning the lottery for any artist.

Every stage of the process, from initial selection to the exhibition, will be filmed for a documentary series to be broadcast later this year on BBC Two. At heart this is a documentary series about art: how it's created, how it embodies ideas, and how it achieves value in our culture.

I did say its like winning the lottery and just as hard because I can imagine every artist wanting to apply. But then it starts to break down and you realise, well not so many will even begin the process I spoke to a few artist friends who thought it was a good idea but wouldn’t get involved because they don’t want to appear on TV, too shy. So slice off a good percentage there. Then the application process were the organisers asked for a video to explain about ourselves and our art practices, now this is not the easiest of projects to put together I was very lucky in being able to call on some previous experience in this field some years ago when: I used to work in radio in the early 80s suddenly with the success of the pop video station MTV every broadcaster was trying to emulate that success and tried changing every radio show into a TV format and every DJ into a VJ, so I was whisked off to a crash course in TV presentation which was only used in a small way at the time but none the less what I learnt there has helped me present myself in networking situations etc ever since. But you can slice a load of artists there.

And finally uploading the application, Midnight Sunday was the closing deadline, but the website was down most of the evening, I kept on trying then eventually at 11:20pm the website was up and I managed to get to click the submit button. Phew!

Can you imagine the disappointment after all the hard work I had put into the production if I had failed at this point. So I am sure there are many artists who would of given up at some point in the evening never to return

I did say its like an artist lottery and chances of winning are so slim, but like the lottery if your not in it you cant win it!

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